Minrose Gwin – författare

"The most powerful and also the most lyrical novel about race, racism, and denial in the American South since To Kill A Mockingbird." —Lee Smith, New York Times–bestselling author of On Agate Hill"I need you to understand how ordinary it all was. . . ."In the turbulent southern summer of 1963, Millwood''s white population steers clear of "Shake Rag," the black section of town. Young Florence Forrest is one of the few who crosses the line. The daughter of a burial insurance salesman with dark secrets and the town''s "cake lady," whose backcountry bootleg runs lead further and further away from a brutal marriage, Florence attaches herself to her grandparents'' longtime maid, Zenie Johnson. Named for Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, Zenie treats the unwanted girl as just another chore, while telling her stories of the legendary queen''s courage and cunning.The more time Florence spends in Shake Rag, the more she recognizes how completely race divides her town, and her story, far from ordinary, bears witness to the truth and brutality of her times—a truth brought to a shattering conclusion when Zenie''s vibrant college-student niece, Eva Greene, arrives that fateful Mississippi summer.Minrose Gwin''s The Queen of Palmyra is an unforgettable evocation of a time and a place in America—a nuanced, gripping story of race and identity."The beauty of the prose, the strength of voice and the sheer force of circumstance will hold the reader spellbound from beginning to end." —Jill McCorkle, New York Times–bestsellingauthor of The Going Away Shoes"Bold and brilliant." —Sharon Oard Warner, author of Deep in the Heart"Affecting and disturbing. . . . thought-provoking." —Publishers Weekly"Atmospheric." —Booklist

Inthe tradition of Jeanette Walls’ TheGlass Castle and Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants, novelist Minrose Gwin offers a beautifullycrafted memoir of rediscovering her mother, the mentally ill poet Erin Taylor,after a life of growing up with her in the South. In an intimate, surprising,emotional, and ultimately uplifting journey into her mother’s past, Gwin, the critically acclaimed author of The Queen ofPalmyra, offers both a daughter’ssoulful elegy to the mother who raised her, and a powerful tribute from onestrong female writer to another—the Erin Taylor that Minrosenever knew.

In the aftermath of a devastating tornado that rips through the town of Tupelo, Mississippi, at the height of the Great Depression, two women worlds apart—one black, one white; one a great-grandmother, the other a teenager—fight for their families’ survival in this lyrical and powerful novel“Gwin’s gift shines in the complexity of her characters and their fraught relationships with each other, their capacity for courage and hope, coupled with their passion for justice.” -- Jonis Agee, bestselling author of The River WifeA few minutes after 9 p.m. on Palm Sunday, April 5, 1936, a massive funnel cloud flashing a giant fireball and roaring like a runaway train careened into the thriving cotton-mill town of Tupelo, Mississippi, killing more than 200 people, not counting an unknown number of black citizens, one-third of Tupelo’s population, who were not included in the official casualty figures.When the tornado hits, Dovey, a local laundress, is flung by the terrifying winds into a nearby lake. Bruised and nearly drowned, she makes her way across Tupelo to find her small family—her hardworking husband, Virgil, her clever sixteen-year-old granddaughter, Dreama, and Promise, Dreama’s beautiful light-skinned three-month-old son.Slowly navigating the broken streets of Tupelo, Dovey stops at the house of the despised McNabb family. Inside, she discovers that the tornado has spared no one, including Jo, the McNabbs’ dutiful teenage daughter, who has suffered a terrible head wound. When Jo later discovers a baby in the wreckage, she is certain that she’s found her baby brother, Tommy, and vows to protect him.During the harrowing hours and days of the chaos that follows, Jo and Dovey will struggle to navigate a landscape of disaster and to battle both the demons and the history that link and haunt them. Drawing on historical events, Minrose Gwin beautifully imagines natural and human destruction in the deep South of the 1930s through the experiences of two remarkable women whose lives are indelibly connected by forces beyond their control. A story of loss, hope, despair, grit, courage, and race, Promise reminds us of the transformative power and promise that come from confronting our most troubled relations with one another.

A natural disaster in the Depression Era South sends two very different women in search of their families in this "extraordinary novel" (Jill McCorkle, author of Life After Life).On Palm Sunday, April 5, 1936, a tornado devastated Tupelo, Mississippi. It killed more than 200 people, not counting an unknown number of black citizens, who were not included in the official casualty figures. In Promise, author Minrose Gwin explores this forgotten tragedy through the eyes of two women—one black, one white; one a great-grandmother, the other a teenager—as they fight for their families'' survival.Dovey, a local laundress, is flung by the winds into a lake and nearly drowned. Yet she makes her way across Tupelo to find her husband, her sixteen-year-old granddaughter, and her great-grandson, Promise, a light-skinned baby boy. When she stops at the house of the despised McNabb family, she discovers that Jo, the McNabbs'' dutiful teenage daughter, has suffered a terrible head wound. And when Jo later discovers a baby in the wreckage, she is certain it is her baby brother and vows to protect him.During the harrowing days that follow, Jo and Dovey struggle to navigate a landscape of disaster—as well as the haunting history that links them together. A story of loss, hope, despair, grit, courage, and race, Promise reminds us of the transformative power of facing our most troubled relations with one another.

In this literary novel set in the 1950s rural South, two sisters must cope with the ripple effect of their mother''s tragic death as they come of age.In the fall of 1957, Olivia McAlister is living in Opelika, Mississippi, caring for her two girls, June and Grace, and her husband, Holly. She dreams of living a much larger life—seeing the world and returning to her wartime job at a landing boat factory in New Orleans. As she watches over the birds in her yard, Olivia feels like an "accidental" —a migratory bird blown off course.When Olivia becomes pregnant again, she makes a fateful decision, compelling Grace, June, and Holly to cope in different ways. While their father digs up the backyard to build a bomb shelter, desperate to protect his family, Olivia''s spinster sister tries to take them all under her wing. But the impact of Olivia''s decision reverberates throughout her daughters'' lives. Grace, caught up in an unconventional love affair, becomes one of the "girls who went away" to have a baby in secret—a choice that touches the life of Ed Mae Johnson, an African-American care worker in a New Orleans orphanage. June, guilt-ridden for her part in exposing Grace''s pregnancy, eventually makes an unhappy marriage.As the years go by, their lives intersect in ways that reflect the unpredictable nature of bird flight that lands in accidental locations—and the consolations of imperfect return.Filled with tragedy, humor, joy, and the indomitable strength of women facing the constricted spaces of the 1950s and 60s, The Accidentals is a poignant, timely novel that reminds us of the hope and consolation that can be found in unexpected landings.

If I had the pen of a ready writer,"" Clayton wrote, ""enabling me to give a pen-picture of the appearance of the virgin forests in these olden times, covered with the upstretching trees, with occasional vines entwining them from top to bottom, loaded with wild grapes or luscious muscadines, and the plains and hillsides waving with beautiful wild flowers, it would read like a fairy tale."" Olden times take on a nostalgic glow in these ""pen pictures"" of early days in Northeast Mississippi. The chivalry, the tall tales, the Indian lore, the social customs, and the local characters portrayed here provide intimate descriptions of how people lived in Lee and Itawamba counties during antebellum times and during Reconstruction.Washington Lafayette Clayton reflected over such scenes of his life and wrote these pen pictures nearly a century ago as reminiscences of better times. In sixty-five articles originally published in the Tupelo Journal in 1905 and 1906, he recorded the life of the Southern frontier of 1840 to the 1860s. These records, preserved here in one volume, are valuable resources for historians, for descendants of Mississippi pioneers, and for those who wish to perceive the nature of simpler times.

Foreword Book Awards, Finalist Richard Beale Davis Award for Lifetime Distinguished Service to Southern LettersNew Mexico Book Awards, Winner in Historical FictionFrom Minrose Gwin, award-winning author of The Accidentals, comes Beautiful Dreamers, a story of a precocious teen and her mother, their gay best friend, and the con man who unravels their family.It’s 1953 when Memory Feather and her mother, Virginia, are welcomed back home to the Mississippi Gulf Coast community of Belle Cote by Virginia’s childhood friend Mac McFadden, whose verve and energy buoy the recently divorced Virginia to embrace this new chapter. Memory (“Mem”) is unlike other girls: she is attuned to the voices of plants and animals and is missing two fingers on her twisted left hand. The three of them knit their lives together and become a close, though unconventional, family.While Mac’s wealth, brains, and good humor have allowed him to carve out a niche in Belle Cote, his position as a gay man active in the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement exposes him to censure, harassment, and even brutality. When the unscrupulous and charismatic Tony Amato arrives in Belle Cote as Mac’s “guest,” he sets in motion a series of events that will shatter familial bonds and forever change Mem’s life. Now, an adult Mem recounts the story of the scars Tony left in her teenage years, confronting her culpability in the disastrous events of that final summer.Sweeping, dramatic, and vividly rendered, Beautiful Dreamers is a novel of innocence and betrayal, love and intolerance, and the care and honesty we owe the families we choose.